MLS kits 2023

[upperV03]

Gonna go ahead and post predictions for this weekend’s matchups a little early. * = confirmed shirt and/or kit choice.

 

*Charlotte (blue/white/blue) vs. *Colorado (burgundy/light blue/burgundy)

 

Columbus (all-yellow or y/b/y) vs. *New England (all-navy)

 

*Montreal (all-gray) vs. DCU (all-black)

 

NYRB (all-yellow) vs. Houston (all-black)

 

NYCFC (all-city blue) vs. Nashville (all-black)

 

Toronto (gray/red/gray) vs. *Atlanta (mint/white/mint)

 

Austin (green/black/black) vs. Vancouver (all-white)

 

Chicago (navy/navy/red) vs. Philly (tan/light blue/tan)

 

*Dallas (all-white) vs. *RSL (red/navy/red)

 

Minnesota (all-black) vs. Orlando (all-white)

 

St. Louis (all-red) vs. Cincy (royal/navy/navy)

 

Portland (green/white/white) vs. Seattle (green/blue/green)

 

San Jose (all-black) vs. SKC (all-sporting blue)

 

LAG (all-white) vs. LAFC (all-black)

 

 

Will be very interested to see if Portland/Seattle does end up being green vs. green again. I have to assume it will be since the Sounders once again have an away kit that’s too dark to properly contrast. The Timbers could opt for pink, but they didn’t do that at home against the Sounders last year, and I personally do not wanna see that at all unless the Sounders also wear their away kits.

[MJWalker45]

Columbus may be all black since they're having "90's Night" at the stadium.

https://www.columbuscrew.com/video/90-s-night-trivia-the-crew-s-gen-zs-name-that-90s-item#90-s-night-trivia-the-crew-s-gen-zs-name-that-90s-item

[upperV03]

36 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

Columbus may be all black since they're having "90's Night" at the stadium.

https://www.columbuscrew.com/video/90-s-night-trivia-the-crew-s-gen-zs-name-that-90s-item#90-s-night-trivia-the-crew-s-gen-zs-name-that-90s-item

New England has already confirmed all-navy in their weekly Matchday Guide article, so Columbus will be in yellow unless the article is incorrect.

[upperV03]

First look at this year’s Parley shirts, to be worn across the league next weekend:

Both are paired with shorts (and presumably socks) that match the base color of the shirt. The design is certainly more interesting than the last couple of years, but I still don’t care for them. Either have teams just wear the shirts as pre-match tops or have Adidas produce team-colored versions instead of forcing everyone to look the same.

Atlanta’s has already leaked, so we know that they’ll be in the black kit and Chicago, their opponents next weekend,  will be in the turquoise.

 

[BlazerBlaze]

Good lord those are horrible 

[upperV03]

According to the “Know before you go” email that the club sends out before home games, the Timbers will be wearing the pink rose kits at home against Seattle on Saturday. The last time they wore a non-green kit at home against Seattle was in 2016. 

 

I have to assume the league stepped and said no more green vs. green matches, which is for the best from a contrast perspective. As a Timbers fan, I do find it incredibly frustrating that they’ll have to change because of the Sounders once again not having a kit that provides sufficient contrast. The same will happen to Austin later this year. Based on their most recent graphic for the match, it looks like the Sounders will be wearing their dragon kits so at least it’ll be secondary vs. secondary.

Every time this issue comes up I say the same thing: the home team should not have to change to accommodate the visitor. If it means Seattle has to go buy some cheap teamwear (even just shorts and socks), then so be it. Hell, Arsenal has worn grey keeper socks with their away kit a few times this year because it was necessary for clash purposes.

[SSmith48]

15 minutes ago, upperV03 said:

According to the “Know before you go” email that the club sends out before home games, the Timbers will be wearing the pink rose kits at home against Seattle on Saturday. The last time they wore a non-green kit at home against Seattle was in 2016. 

 

I have to assume the league stepped and said no more green vs. green matches, which is for the best from a contrast perspective. As a Timbers fan, I do find it incredibly frustrating that they’ll have to change because of the Sounders once again not having a kit that provides sufficient contrast. The same will happen to Austin later this year. Based on their most recent graphic for the match, it looks like the Sounders will be wearing their dragon kits so at least it’ll be secondary vs. secondary.

Every time this issue comes up I say the same thing: the home team should not have to change to accommodate the visitor. If it means Seattle has to go buy some cheap teamwear (even just shorts and socks), then so be it. Hell, Arsenal has worn grey keeper socks with their away kit a few times this year because it was necessary for clash purposes.

This could have been avoided if the Sounders just did the sensible thing and made the back of the new road uniform red, no? 

[upperV03]

34 minutes ago, SSmith48 said:

This could have been avoided if the Sounders just did the sensible thing and made the back of the new road uniform red, no? 

Then you have the red/green colorblind issue, although the league has allowed that to happen quite a few times over the years. That said, green/white/white vs. red/black/black or even green/white/green vs. red/black/red definitely would’ve been better than the green vs. green from the last few years. The biggest issue is that the league classifies the Sounders’ primaries as a “light” kit, allowing them to go with dark colors for their secondaries. The league really started to clamp down on the one dark/one light kit rule back around 2017/18, and yet the Sounders were able to go from having a white away kit in 2017/18 to now three consecutive dark secondary kits.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 hour ago, upperV03 said:

Every time this issue comes up I say the same thing: the home team should not have to change to accommodate the visitor. If it means Seattle has to go buy some cheap teamwear (even just shorts and socks), then so be it. Hell, Arsenal has worn grey keeper socks with their away kit a few times this year because it was necessary for clash purposes.

 

But also each team should be allowed to have a white kit in their back pocket for situations like this.

 

I agree it's bogus Seattle is forcing Portland off its green shirts, even though I think the rose shirts are A+.

[upperV03]

FC Cincinnati has posted that they’ll be in all-orange at St. Louis tonight, so it’ll either be all-pink/red vs. all-orange (which wouldn’t make much sense) or St. Louis will be in gray at home.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

This Portland/Seattle match looks really, really dumb.

 

Giving each team a teamwear white shirt for cases like this is the easiest solution.

 

And as I type this, Portland just scored its second goal. Clearly punishment to Seattle for not having a proper clash kit.

[upperV03]

Yeah, Portland/Seattle is the league’s premier rivalry and tonight’s edition looked almost completely unrecognizable:

Here’s the reasoning that a Timbers’ official gave to one of our local reporters:

And apparently the two remaining Timbers/Sounders matchups this season (both in Seattle) will have the same kit matchup:

Not really sure why it’s necessary in Seattle, as the two clubs went pink vs. green in Seattle last year. In any case, it’s extremely dumb. The home team shouldn’t have to change for a derby match; that possibility shouldn’t even be on the table. I’ve said enough about this issue this time and in the past, so I’ll keep it at that for now.

[upperV03]

One more thing for tonight, I just noticed that St. Louis did indeed wear their secondaries at home against Cincinnati but debuted the navy shorts with them:

 

Seriously, they should just wear the navy shorts full time. With both kits.

[Digby]

Columbus were wearing the black shorts last night too, even though ostensibly yellow shorts would contrast better with New England's navy. Personally I'm unbothered by shorts clashes usually, so I don't care. Sharp look and the Crew always do well to avoid monochrome IMO. Still can't believe they've never done yellow/black stripes, hoops, or tesselated patterns, whatever.

[upperV03]

Austin was another team that wore their secondary kits at home yesterday, which allowed Vancouver to wear their awesome navy/white/navy combo:

 

Even as a Timbers fan, I think this is the single best kit (when worn with the white shorts) in the league right now. It looked great last year and looked great again last night.

[MJWalker45]

7 hours ago, Digby said:

Columbus were wearing the black shorts last night too, even though ostensibly yellow shorts would contrast better with New England's navy. Personally I'm unbothered by shorts clashes usually, so I don't care. Sharp look and the Crew always do well to avoid monochrome IMO. Still can't believe they've never done yellow/black stripes, hoops, or tesselated patterns, whatever.

The closest they came to that was the white and yellow kit with slight black pinstripes on the sides of the yellow stripes. Even doing a pinstripe pattern would be a neat look for the black uniform.

[Digby]

2 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

The closest they came to that was the white and yellow kit with slight black pinstripes on the sides of the yellow stripes. Even doing a pinstripe pattern would be a neat look for the black uniform.

 

I remember that one, and the baby-puke uniform I guess was arguably white and yellow stripes, in a way. But I want black and yellow!

[MJWalker45]

3 hours ago, Digby said:

 

I remember that one, and the baby-puke uniform I guess was arguably white and yellow stripes, in a way. But I want black and yellow!

That yellow and blue kit should never have been allowed to exist. 

[WBeltz]

 

Montreal's home kit leaked. The back is plain blue. It's not bad, but I wish the stripe pattern on the front was a little more prevalent. It's going to look lost on TV.

[GriffinM6]

18 minutes ago, WBeltz said:

 

Montreal's home kit leaked. The back is plain blue. It's not bad, but I wish the stripe pattern on the front was a little more prevalent. It's going to look lost on TV.

Is it just the lighting in the pic, or is that the same blue as Charlotte?